Australia bans Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

An implied rape scene appears to be the reason the country's classification board will not rate the game.

The Australian Classification Board has refused to give a rating to Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, meaning the game is pretty much banned in the country.

On the website of the Australian Classification Board it says, "The computer game is classified RC in accordance with the National Classification Code, Computer Games Table, 1. (a) as computer games that "depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified."

The described scene sounds like the one in a demo of the game that caused controversy during 2013. Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun Dennis Wedin of Dennaton said:

"We were really sad that some people were so affected by it, because maybe they had been through something like that of their own. Maybe they had a terrible experience of their own that was triggered by the game. That was not intentional at all. We didn’t add the scene just to be controversial. There is a meaning to these two characters. There’s a lot more to them than just this scene.

"We removed it for the demo. We’re going to work with it, see if we can fix it. You get a bigger picture when you play the whole game, which is lost in the demo of course."

It remains to be seen what Dennaton will do - will they remove or alter the scene so it can receive classification in the country? We will update you as and when we hear more.